


In Monochrome

by Senket



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-19
Updated: 2011-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-15 15:08:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senket/pseuds/Senket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John reflects on himself, Sherlock, Moriarty, charcoal, and the worth of a single sheet of vellum paper. Protecting Sherlock is wroth everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Monochrome

At first he had been watching Sherlock, waiting for one of those sudden monumental breakthroughs as the man stood in still, thoughtful silence. By the detective’s request he had shut the lights. The streetlamp had flickered several times before resolutely turning itself off as well- that had been several hours ago, and now the only light came from the half-moon filtering through the gap between buildings.

White light shone in a single strip, hitting Sherlock from forehead to breast and casting an odd partial shadow across the floor. John flickered in and out of sleep a few times, slouched in his armchair. He’d dreamed of staring at fireworks through a haze of water slowly turning red with blood- wide awake now but unable to focus on the case, he looked rather than watched. He’d never really just looked before.

Sherlock Holmes was a study in monochrome. He thought for a moment it might have been the bleaching light, but he knew what Sherlock looked like in the sun. He was white, so white, barely a hint of colour even in the upturn of his lips, hair dark as his shadow, and eyes, eyes like the September sky, so uniform one could never tell behind which cloud the sun might be hiding.

Sherlock ought to be a painting, ‘man at the window,’ ‘man contemplating.’ Perhaps not a painting, no, if the artist dared to use fleck of colour in the picture it would be all _wrong_ , and he knew enough that all those painted blacks were just very dark greens or blues or reds.

No, charcoal, no doubt. Sherlock was charcoal: one wrong move, an improbable gust of air, and the image would vanish. If he ran his fingers through it, gray would run all across the form, twisting and diluting it. ‘Don’t touch it,’ he thought, ‘stop changing it.’

But Sherlock had already set, a charcoal ( _yes_ ) drawing under a sheet of vellum, always under that leaf where no one could change him but no one would see him clearly, a vague blur through translucent paper. Not Lestrade, not Mycroft, never Sally. Only, Moriarty was trying to tear up that protective layer, fingers all grimy with red ( _so red_ ), and get his palm prints ( _never the red of warning because there wasn’t one bright enough for Jim Moriarty, but the red of nicked artery blood_ ) all over the _thing_ that was Sherlock. John wouldn’t stand for it.

Boring, parchment-yellow, _translucent_ John knew how to be stubborn and paper-thin or not, he would never _break_ , especially not for anyone like _Moriarty_ ( _with his red, red hands)_.

And if he was the only one to ever really _see_ Sherlock in his black and whites and greys, if at the end he was worn from finger-oil and red claws, if he was changed, marked forever by a hazy afterimage of the figure pressed into him, then that was fine.

Absolutely fine.


End file.
